Topic: How do i change the way my computer starts up?

[beatkilla]

I got a new computer and it starts up like this-hp screen comes up and says press esc to continue to startup-i press esc and it takes like 2minutes before it goes to the next screen which has a choice of continue with normal startup amongst some others hm unsure of.when i choose normal startup it has a blinkink cursor for 2 or 3 minutes before windows is starting.

[beatkilla]

Typos!

[flipp]

Hmm HP, brand new, loads like molasses in Vermont in December; sounds like HP is still loading all kinds of trialware on their builds which all wants to start on bootup so the first thing I recommend doing is read the following http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ then run it and see how much difference it makes. Report back and I'll dig through some old Windows bookmarks I made when I went through a similsr situation when my dad bought a new comp.

I'm assuming it has some version of W7 on it.

[beatkilla]

Yes windows 7 home premium 64bit.

[beatkilla]

So i brought my new tower to a friends house so i can go online to register some software to use.As i have no internet connection myself just using this for video production.And there my computer goes right to Windows is starting up and has none of the symptoms i described earlier.Strange the two differences are 1) a different monitor and 2) an internet connection....Strange but how does this make any difference.Its still the same for me at home with the weird startup.

[mattmiller]

The startup process you described sounds like what happens when the computer shuts down improperly.  Were your options something like:  start Windows normally, start in safe-mode, start in safe-mode with networking, etc.?  Are you shutting down the computer properly before you start it up and get this?  How many times did it happen at your house?  Every time?  How many times is that?  How many times did it start normally at your friend's house?

It's not your monitor.  And I don't think it has anything to do with the Internet connection, but I really don't know if it's possible that any of the pre-installed junk could have registry or BIOS entries that are making it try to establish communication with the outside world during the boot procedure.

[flipp]

Two little programs I install on every version of Windows I use or maintain support on are available from Mike Lin's site http://mlin.net/index.shtml. They are Startup Control Panel and StartupMonitor. The former works well in conjunction with MS's utility msconfig. Between the three I can pretty much control what programs boot at startup and what boots only when I want to use it.

What did PCdecrapifier find?

< I don't know if the above programs work with W7 as the most recent version of Windows I run, or support on family member's comps, is XP >

[rocksuitcase]

 beatkilla, another thing I thought of when i read your case of using your friends monitor: How old is your monitor? It could be the cable, or even drivers for that monitor.

[rastasean]

Couldn't the long startup screen be related to BCDedit time out?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709667%28WS.10%29.aspx

/timeout switch

[beatkilla]

I found the problem if i have my external harddrive plugged in prior to starting up i get that long startup and if i have it unplugged it starts up in a few seconds.I have not had that problem with 5 or 6 other computers leaving external plugged in but not a big deal to plug and unplug everytime.Thanks to everyone who offered assistance!

[mattmiller]

I found the problem if i have my external harddrive plugged in prior to starting up i get that long startup and if i have it unplugged it starts up in a few seconds.I have not had that problem with 5 or 6 other computers leaving external plugged in but not a big deal to plug and unplug everytime.Thanks to everyone who offered assistance!

Look for a setting in the BIOS to tell the system not to look for your external hard drive during boot.  Somewhere (probably on a BIOS menu called "boot priority" or something similar) it's listed as the first boot device (or, at least, it's listed ahead of your internal hard drive).  That's why it stalls -- it's looking for a bootable partition on your external drive and only moving on to the internal hard drive after it fails to find anything on the external drive to boot from.